


Keerthi

by The_Wavesinger



Category: Original Work
Genre: Exile, F/F, Loyalty, Quests, Redeeming Honour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 03:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21009035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/pseuds/The_Wavesinger
Summary: A loyal footsoldier follows her Knight into exile. An impossible task isn't so impossible when your commander is as stubborn as a fucking rock.





	Keerthi

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reconditarmonia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reconditarmonia/gifts).

The stories of Aaghnya of the Line of Arta, General of the Dvipa, and her great victories are known across the world. Many songs have been sung about her victories at Kaduganna and how she breathed fire and blood and freed the City of the Ancestors from a thousand-year reign of the Dark Gods. Her name is etched into the history books: the Great Uniter, commander of the Armies, _Uthumwunayaka_, beloved of the Old Ones.

This, however, is not a story of Aaghnya the General. This is the story of a war-child, a woman who struggled to her position only to be cast out of Court. This is a story of Aaghnya’s First Exile, and a story of how she won back her honour. And, most of all, it is a story of the loyal footsoldier Minu daughter of Indra and her devotion to Aaghnya.

—

It was an honest mistake.

Aaghnya hadn’t _meant_ to countermand the Queen’s orders. It was just—the army of the Dark Gods looked terrible in a way she hadn’t been prepared for (she would never admit it, but Minu knew Aaghnya, knew the terror in her eyes as she gazed upon the screaming hordes wielding lightning and mist and darkness). And it was Aaghnya’s first battle as Knight, her first time commanding the Phalanx. It was meant to be an easy battle, not an ambush

Still, that changed nothing. The Queen had given an order, from her palanquin, to march forward (suicide, it would have been, to throw their scarce numbers against that Power, but the Queen was born under the aegis of the Sinha, brave and unyielding). Aaghnya did not listen. Not even Minu’s pleading could make her listen. She had ordered a retreat instead.

“I didn’t mean to,” Aaghnya did not whisper to Minu. Her face was pale and trembling, and, in the privacy of their tent, her shoulders shook with suppressed motion. “I was nervous,” she didn’t say. Or, “I was afraid.”

She didn’t say anything.

Minu wouldn’t realize, until much, much later, what that silence meant.

—

Aaghnya was banished from Court.

Of course she was.

She disobeyed the Queen; exile was the kindest fate that could be given to her, by the Old Laws.

And her exile, at least, was not permanent. Truly the Queen was merciful.

(The most merciful thing would be to ignore the Old Laws. Aaghnya was young and full of promise and did the right thing, and should not have been punished for it. But Minu wasn’t in the habit of casually contemplating treason, because she wasn’t Aaghnya and somebody needed to keep Aaghnya alive, and so didn’t speak the thought aloud, or even think it in the privacy of her own head. The Queen’s Ministers had ears everywhere.)

“I’m coming with you,” Minu said, firmly, as Aaghnya was packing. Aaghnya wouldn’t stay alive a single minute out there without here.

Aaghnya pressed her lips together, her forehead crinkling in displeasure, but didn’t argue.

—

Aaghnya was taken to the Border in chains.

It was tradition; Minu had watched it happen a thousand times over. To prevent the exile from breaking free and running while she was still under the protection of the powers that held the Border safe, said the Old Laws.

These days, the Border was five hours away, not weeks out. Aaghnya shuffled, the chains binding her feet together clinking with every step, her hands bound behind her so the guards around her had to catch her when she stumbled.

Her eyes (a grey that few had ever seen; spirit-touched, they’d called her, as a child) flashed with fury every time one of the guards touched her to right her, their metal armour brushing against soft cotton cloth. Her head was held high. Not one of the kicking, screaming penitents that Minu had watched being taken on this very same march.

Still, dust swirled up around them, flies and mosquitoes buzzed, the dark forest faded slowly into scrubby bushes and tangled thorns, the sky overhead stayed an infuriating cheery blue, and still they marched on. Minu’s back ached with the weight of both their packs, but she didn’t complain. If Aaghnya wasn’t going to complain, shackled and tied down as she was, neither would Minu. She would bear her suffering in silence like her lady.

—

The ritual was—

Minu looked away.

She was a coward to not bear witness to this, but she couldn’t. She _couldn’t_ watch.

Still, she heard.

The whisper of the long knives, as they skimmed across Aaghnya’s head, taking hair with them (and it was silly, but—Aaghnya’s hair was Minu’s pride and joy, waist-length and jet black and lovingly tended to, brushed out every night by Minu’s skilled hand, and it was now _gone_). The Queen’s Pronouncement read out by the crier: exile, until her hair grew back to its former glory or until she snatched the Tooth of Arta from the City of the Ancestor. (So, until her hair grew back, impossible tasks being impossible.) Dishonour on her and hers, for disobeying the Queen, until she made amends.

And then—

The clink of chains being unlocked and thrown off, and a hiccoughing breath that might have been Aaghnya’s, and there was a sudden, roaring cheer and the silky knives-out-of-a-sheath sound of the Border being parted.

So. That was it.

Minu hurried through even as the portal closed behind them.

Aaghnya was—

Her scalp gleamed in the sunlight, dark skin finally touching the rays of light that pounded down. She stood still, unmoving, her eyes closed, face twisted up against some unnameable emotion, alone among miles of sand and scrub, without armour or weapons, her thin shift the only protection she had against the elements and against enemies.

_She has you,_ Minu reminded herself fiercely. _This is why you’re here._

Still—

Minu turned back to the Border, and her fingertips touched the shimmering veil. The figures of the guards and the gathered crowds were retreating, but they were still visible. She could step back in. It would be easy. She could go home, to whatever she could call home with her only family in exile, and she could live out her days at Court in safe anonymity. It’d be easy. It would be so easy.

And yet.

Aaghnya was looking straight at her now, regarding her with unblinking eyes. Her gaze is unfathomable, and she opened her mouth.

All of a sudden, Minu didn’t want to hear what she’d have to say. “Sir,” she said instead, and the word came out softer than she intends it to. She cleared her throat. “Sir. We have to move on. We have to get to the Temple Ruins before sundown; it won’t be safe out here.”

Aaghnya blinked, and a fleeting moment of what Minu thought might be sadness passed across her face, gone almost as quickly as Minu saw it. Then she extended her hand to Minu. “My sword, please.”

They set out in silence.

Minu didn’t look back. Neither, she thought (hoped) did Aaghnya.

—

The Phalanx sheltered in the Temple Ruins and didn’t come to any harm.

Two lone warriors, with no armour and barely any weapons or food or water, it turned out, were a different matter entirely.

“We’re safe here, sir,” Minu said, and she was proud of how steady her voice was. “It might look creepy, but the Old Ones still reign here.” She didn’t believe herself. Couldn’t believe herself, with the lengthening shadows crowding over tumbled-down walls grown over with weeds and vines. Cold fingers trembled their way across her spine, and she could swear that there were eyes at her back.

Aaghnya snorted. “Hmph.”

That was a tone Minu didn’t like. “Sir?”

“They’re small gods here. Not like in the City. They won’t dare attack a descendant of Arta, even if the protection of the Ruins breaks.”

That was nonsense talk, fairy-tales told to children in the nursery. And Minu wasn’t of the blood of Arta besides, only a mere commoner; even if the protection held, Minu was not under its aegis. But questioning Aaghnya now, right after, her head still gleaming and freshly shaven in the mingled light of the sun and moon? Minu would rather have her soul taken. “Yes sir.”

And she was tired, her feet aching and her back throbbing, and Aaghnya, too, had to be close to collapsing. Fuck the Dark Gods. If they wanted to take Minu, she was fine with that, as long as they didn’t take Aaghnya. And as long as they let her get a good night’s sleep first.

—

The Dark Gods didn’t take her in the night.

Minu woke to bright sunlight piercing through the windows of the only one of the tumble-down buildings that still had some semblance of a roof. Her bedroll was nice and warm, and she turned to go back to sleep, except—

Fuck.

_Fuck_.

Aaghnya was gone.

Her bedroll was empty, her sword missing. Her pack was still there, but that boded only ill.

Minu scrambled for her bows and knives, and ran.

She stumbled into the yard, tripping over and stubbing her toe on fallen stone as she blinked sunlight out of her eyes. If Aaghnya was taken, already, now, with so long left of her exile—

Maybe the Queen would be merciful and send out warriors. Maybe. But few taken outside the Border were found, even those who were Knights with the raw power that Aaghnya had.

“Fuck,” Minu cursed. “_Fuck_.”

A dry, amused voice sounded next to her ear: “Something the matter, Minu?”

Minu spun around so fast that she would have fallen over if not for Aaghnya catching her arm in an iron grip. “You startled me, sir.” An understatement, if anything. Her heart was pounding faster than a rabbit’s, her palms sweaty and warm. Her voice came out even only by dint of iron control.

Aaghnya didn’t look the least bit contrite. “Be more aware of your surroundings, then.”

Minu bit down on the caustic remark that begged to be let out. “Sir, we’re not within the Border anymore, and not with the Phalanx. We’re going to have to be careful if we have to stay here until we can go back.”

Aaghnya scowled. Minu shouldn’t have mentioned the exile, maybe, but. There was something else in Aaghnya’s eyes, a look Minu knew all too well, the look that had made her choose Aaghnya for her commander back when they were both training and a look that made her regret her choice all too often. “What makes you think we’re going to stay here, Minu?”

“Sir?” Surely Aaghnya couldn’t mean the two of them wandering the Wild Lands alone. Even Aaghnya wasn’t that reckless.

“We’re going to take back the Tooth of Arta, of course.”

That was—fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. No. “That’s in the City, sir.”

Aaghnya frowned. “Yes?”

“The City,” Minu enunciated, “that is currently held by the Dark Gods. Our mortal enemies. The armies you rightfully retreated from. The ones who hold enough power to defeat the Old Ones. Who _did_ defeat the Old Ones, over and over again.”

“We’re here,” Aaghnya said, and _shrugged_, the nerve of her. “So they can’t be that powerful.” But there was a flash of fear under her words, and ah. Of course. Her retreat hadn’t only enraged the Queen after all.

“Sir, they _are_ that powerful.”

“I _will_ take back the Tooth,” Aaghnya snapped. Then, rounding on Minu, her eyes shining, “and for that matter, I’ll take back the City too. That was the last time I flee from the Dark Gods. Their reign is _over_. I will end them even if I have to do it myself, with not a single person behind me. I will win back my honour no matter what it takes.” And she strode off, leaving Minu to scramble after her.

Well fuck. They were both going to die.

“There will be at least one person behind you,” Minu said (shouted, rather, to be sure Aaghnya could hear her despite the distance between them, and she wasn’t going to leave without their packs, was she).

Aaghnya laughed, a wild, pealing laugh.

They were both definitely going to die, and no-one would even find their corpses.

—

The terms of exile, at least the non-permanent kind, were simple. Lie low until your hair grew back, fight one of the small gods (alone, without the armies of the Dark Ones to back them up), get your honour back by some brave but not stupidly reckless deed, try not to be ambushed and killed before your sentence was up, etcetera etcetera.

Minu forgot, sometimes, how Aaghnya had been a war-child from a fallen House, cut off from the old customs. How she carved her own way with her night-forged sword and the strength of her will. The girl she’d been, winning her way into the ranks of Knight by sheer strength and skill, haughty and sharp to her peers, throwing herself headfast at every challenge. They’d all of them wanted to follow her into battle, back then, the footsoldiers. She was, after all, spirit-marked, and any who followed her were guaranteed a taste of glory. Minu just had the luck to be the best of them all, to get to choose, instead of being absorbed into the common ranks of the Phalanx.

If she could choose again, she’d definitely choose the fucking Phalanx.

“Sir, you don’t _need_ to do this,” Minu said. Tried to say, but Aaghnya lengthened her stride. “Sir.”

She loved Aaghnya dearly, but at times like these she belied her upbringing and turned into the very essence of a spoiled noble used to getting her own way. “Sir!”

“Do you _want_ me to be dishonoured forever?” Aaghnya hissed.

Minu, truth be told, didn’t give a rat’s ass about Aaghnya’s honour. She didn’t want glory any more. She just wanted Aaghnya to stay alive. That fact, however, wouldn’t help the situation. “No, sir, of course not.”

“Then why are you trying to stop me?”

Minu sighed. “Sir, I care for you very much. I don’t want to see you die. I don’t want to see me die, for that matter.”

“Are you saying,” Aaghnya asked, “that you think I’ll fail?” But she was biting back a smile, suddenly, her shoulders slumping a little. She slowed down to matched Minu’s pace, and when Minu took her hand, Aaghnya didn’t try to make her let go.

—

Aaghnya knew where the City was, Minu hoped. They were marching with direction, at least, pointed to the North. And there were the old stories of Arta’s blood knowing always, always where their long-stolen home was, a divine guidance and a promise that was never fulfilled.

“Sir,” Minu tried, once, “Are you sure you know where we’re going?”

“Yes,” Aaghnya growled, “Of course I do.” There was a snap of impatience in her voice, tenser and stronger than her usual sharpness.

Minu didn’t ask again.

Still, she could feel the prickling sensation spreading across her body. It was—strange. The brush had long given way to thick, thorny forest, dry and rooted in sand and yet still growing strong, olive green and brown and sharp (much like Aaghnya, some part of her supplied, and Minu had to suppress a giggle), so different from the forests inside the Border. Each tree could hide a full-grown person behind it. And their enemies had their own powers and tricks and wiles, powers which only grew stronger as they moved away from the protection of the Border.

Minu kept her hands on her weapons. They were on foreign ground, and it paid to be cautious. Someone had to temper Aaghnya’s reckless onward march, to be there when something inevitably happened, after all.

—

Minu loved Aaghnya. Minu had maybe fallen in love with Aaghnya the moment she knelt and pledged her loyalty to her and Aaghnya, eschewing the traditional words, drew her up and gathered her into her arms. Her world had, in that moment, narrowed to this too-proud girl who fought with the grace of a lion and slipped away with bundles of food and clothes to the orphanages and hospitals when no-one was looking, who herself pledged her loyalty not to the Queen but to the Promise of the City (traditional enough, but eyebrow-raising all the same). Aaghnya was everything to her, lord and Knight and sister and lover.

It was easy, so easy, to slip into Aaghnya’s bedroll and kiss her deeply, to let her hands roam all over her body with the ease of long practise.

Then, suddenly, Aaghnya drew back. “You’re trying to convince me to go back, aren’t you?” Minu couldn’t see her face in the dark, but she knew the exact shape of her expression: biting on her lip, eyes round. Betrayed.

“No!” Minu couldn’t help the words coming out louder than they should. The accusation stung, even when she would have expected it. “I would never use this like that. Use _us_ like that.” This was—separate, yet not, everything she knew about Aaghnya, and she’d never use this the same way she’d never use Aaghnya’s thoughts about the Queen. The way Aaghnya would never use Minu’s hatred of her own long-dead parents. “We have _lines_, sir.”

Aaghnya sighed, and her sigh came out soft and watery. Was she—

She was crying, Minu realized, and in the years she had known Aaghnya she’d only ever seen her cry a scant handful of times. Great choked sobs, and Minu could feel herself responding with her own tears, but she suppressed them. Now wasn’t the time.

Instead, she held Aaghnya and kissed away the tears until, finally, she fell asleep.

—

Their luck ran out the next day.

The creature that attacked them was—

Minu had trained for these fights. She knew, in theory, what to do if one of the small gods attacked. (The Dark Ones, the ones Aaghnya was trying to take on? You hoped they killed you quickly, which was why this entire quest was madness, but focus, Minu, and try not to die, will you?)

She’d fought, in theory. She’d practiced, in theory. And yet it was so much _more_.

It _moved_ with a speed she couldn’t comprehend. A blur of limbs, or not-quite-limbs, and a pressing sensations of too-fast, and maybe it wasn’t moving, maybe it was in her head. But Aaghnya was fighting it, somehow, her night-forged sword with its thousand curses dripping with bright gold blood. And maybe the stories about the blood of Arta were at least partially true, because Minu was frozen in place, some strange haunting music paralyzing her will, trapped in treacle, still in the same stance she had been in when it sprung out and surprised them, but Aaghnya was fighting.

She was…she moved with the monster (not one of the small gods, surely, the small gods bled blue, she’d learned that, but here was Aaghnya’s sword dripping gold), and the cold arts swirled around her.

Aaghnya was grace and strength on the practice-field, but here, she struggled, and Minu could see her muscles straining, her jaw locked. But still she fought, and still she kept up, and she was…leading the thing away from Minu? It seemed like it, at least, and none of that strange dark power focused on Minu, none of it wrapped around her, she was safe here even in the midst of battle. Kept safe, somehow, by Aaghnya.

But—

Minu saw the lunge before Aaghnya did, somehow, and she couldn’t let it happen. Wouldn’t let it happen. She would never understand how she did it, but she tore herself from her stupor, achingly slow even as the thing prepared for the killing blow.

Her knife met it just time, and it _wailed_. A screeching, hurting sound, a sound Minu would like to never hear again in her life.

Aaghnya was there, suddenly, slashing and moving and chanting some unknowable chant, one of the Knight’s tools that the blood of Arta was supposed to wield and which Minu had thought was a silly story until today, a glow about her as if she was from one of the old stories, her voice raised with a rage Minu had never heard before.

Until finally, finally, the creature collapsed.

Then the darkness dissipated into strips of black mist and then nothingness, and they stood alone again in the forest.

It was gone.

Minu dropped to her knees; her legs wouldn’t hold her up any longer. She was panting, from shock or effort or maybe pure rage, and she could feel sweat dripping from her forehead. Her arm was throbbing; she realized, disinterestedly, as if from far away, that it was raw and red and dripping blood from some wound that must have been inflicted without her knowledge, without her feeling it.

“You’re hurt,” Aaghnya said, kneeling beside her, and she, too sounded as if she was far away. “Minu—” She took in a great gulping sob. “I’ll take you back to the Border.”

That snapped Minu out of her daze, a bucket of cold water thrown over her suddenly. “What?” Surely she couldn’t have heard Aaghnya correctly.

“I’ll take you to the Border,” Aaghnya repeated, and her eyes were scrunched up strangely, her voice choked. “I’m sorry, you were right. You were hurt because of me. You can go back. You _should_ go back.”

Will you come with me? Minu almost asked, the first thought flashing across her mind. But she knew what the answer was. Stupid, reckless Aaghnya. Stupid, reckless, self-sacrificing Aaghnya, so determined to make a martyr of herself no matter what Minu wanted. “No.”

“You need treatment for that,” Aaghnya snapped. Her hands were shaking, Minu saw. Both their hands were shaking.

“This? It’s just a scratch.” It _was_ just a scratch. No green-tinged poison that their enemy favoured (according, at least, to her training), and it barely covered a fourth of her forearm. Minu had had worse training injuries. Out here, it was worse, a liability, yes, but—“I’m not going to leave you running off on a fool’s errand, okay?”

“You got hurt because of me.”

And oh. _Oh_. Of course. It was so typically Aaghnya that Minu felt like crying. “It wasn’t your fault, sir.” Minu kissed her for emphasis. “I chose to follow you. I can make my own decisions.”

“The oath you swore—”

“Doesn’t bind me to an exile. I promise I made my own choices.”

Aaghnya was still trembling, her eyes wild, far away, running her hands across Minu’s shoulders as if to assure herself that Minu was still there, still alive.

“You won’t stop me,” Minu snapped. “I’ll sneak behind you to the City if I have to. I will hunt you down. I believe in your stupid quest, okay? You never lost your honour, but if you want to take the Tooth and the City and the thrice-damned heavens themselves I _will_ follow you. You can’t stop me.”

Aaghnya laughed wetly. “Thank you, Minu. You’re very sweet..” She gathered Minu into her arms, again, and it almost felt like the very first time, except Minu was swearing herself to her all over again.

This time, she knew what it meant. This time, she knew she would follow Aaghnya right into the jaws of death.

—

For a full two years Aaghnya-the-Exile and Minu her footsoldier made their way to the City. That Quest is a story unto itself, as full of danger and bravery and loss as it was.

But one day during the full height of harvest Aaghnya tricked and fought her way into the City of the Ancestors and brought the Tooth of Arta to the Queen at Court. And so she cast off her exile and regained the badge of her honour. And later she would return to the City at the head of a great host, and win it for her own.

Minu the footsoldier stayed by Aaghnya for the rest of their days, pledging her troth to her. The Old Ones themselves, it is said, came out of their retreat to bless their union.


End file.
